Pieces of the Past
by TheMysteriouswatcher
Summary: Heavenly Host is one big mess. Sachiko, finally put to rest, can't get away from her murder-filled past. Ayumi tries to find a charm to go back in time, Satoshi tries to build up the courage to ask Naomi out, Yoshiki wants to be there for Ayumi, and Kizami? He's just being Kizami. Will have SatoshixNaomi and AyumixYoshiki, and maybe some other small stuff here and there.
1. The mess that is Heavenly Host

**Chapter 1: The mess that is Heavenly Host**

You'd think that after the core of a machine is finally removed after many years of long, enduring service, the machine it controlled would fall apart, right? It would stop working, it would fall to bits, it would disassemble like any other sensible machine would.

It would stop the _killing._

But this wasn't any ordinary machine.

This was a demonic, evil machine, with the sole purpose of devouring as many souls as it possibly could in the shortest amount of time possible. Furthermore, its _core _had been replaced…

This "machine" was built on the hate and maliciousness of a single person… A person that had been put on the duty as the machine's core. A person that had been put into so much suffering and wrongdoing so that she was able to defy the very laws of physics. She could bend time to obey her every will, and she used this powerful ability to… _Hire _three more engineers for her machine. And since then, this machine has been in service, killing more and more souls every day that passes.

Due to a very unfortunate group that had, like everyone else, been sent to this horrible place because of their blissful ignorance, they had been sent into this dreadful machine.

This group had will and every reason to try and survive, but luck was not always on their side. Of the nine that were sent into the machine, four of them fell in its halls and their souls were forced to endure eternal torture, lost forever and locked in the mazes of their own demises.

The other five, however, managed to do something that none of the previous visitors had managed to do. Due to their sharp wits and fast legs to carry them onward, they finally managed to put the machine's core out of commission, simply by granting her the simplest of things.

Her memories of when she was alive. She also had something returned to her that was taken from her long, long ago, just before the machine was first formed.

However, it wasn't enough.

Even though the brave group of five people managed to put her damned soul to rest, it just wasn't enough.

Shortly before the departure, it appeared that the machine was no longer dependent on its core to kill souls. It simply took one of the engineers, another young girl put through pain and suffering , and simply promoted her to be the new core. The group escaped, but the machine was still left active.

And up to this day, it just keeps killing souls, obeying its new core.

**(Just a beginning, I'll write more chapters later, I just put this up to see if anyone out there thinks I should continue this. Check the summary if you want to know what it's about.)**


	2. Scarred for Life

**Chapter 2: Scarred for life**

The halls were empty. Completely devoid of any life. At times, the cursed machine was completely silence, any activity as though vaporized in comparison to the blood-chilling events that usually took place there. Creeping, ominous powers were lying in wait, resonating between the halls' wooden walls.

Many souls had fallen here, every single one more unique than the previous. They had been simple human beings, each with their own set of flaws and traits. Yet, this didn't in any way grant you any kind of freedom from the consequence if your ignorance got the better of you.

Loneliness weren't uncommon in these halls either. So many came here, yet loneliness was still present. Why, you ask? Think of it like this.

The core has her own plane of existence within the machine, and then her three engineers each have one of their own. There's nothing that can determine which of these planes of existence you'll end up in after going through with what brought you here in the first place.

The Sachiko Ever After charm, posted and published on the internet by a careless blog owner without a single regard in the aspect of the safety of others. Selfishness, you could call it.

Loneliness, indeed…

The sudden silence was broken by footsteps that, strangely enough, couldn't be heard. They did resonate between the woodworks of the walls, but to the naked ear alone, they were unperceivable.

The footsteps belonged to one of the lost spirits, slowly walking through one of the darkened hallways without any rhyme or reason, without any apparent intent in sight. The spirit itself was a girl, most likely in her late, or somewhat late, teens. It would be hard to make out any prominent features just by looking at her alone.

Her hair was brown, though it may have been hard to determine, and it was nicely done into two curls right below her ears. This one seemed like a recently dead.

-"Where am I even going, anyway?" The spirit said solemnly, her cold lips not quite moving in sync with her words, and her chill voice amplified by the echoing halls. She was facing another of the classrooms, fully aware that there would be nothing in there whatsoever that could be of use to her in this situation.

Like anything could be.

She carried on past the door, like always carrying the pain of her death on her neck with her. She looked like she had been hung with a rope, her neck slightly longer than what it should have been and visible rope marks on the soft skin. The choking sensation she had felt during her last moments in the living life would always be with her, and she knew this.

She reached a staircase, a whole hurricane of thoughts swirling around inside her head and dead mind, like it usually did. She hadn't been hung by any normal means. To anyone, it might have just been a suicide, a hopeless solution of a hopeless problem, but if one would have gone even deeper, like a friend of this deceased person had done, they would surely have found out the truth.

-''I miss you, Naomi…" The ghost whispered, the sound waves effectively fooling her into thinking someone else was talking to her by the echo. She tightly pressed her hand to her chest, where her heart was. Had she still been living, she would have felt its ordinary, regular thumping.

At this stage, she couldn't feel a single thing. It was an eerie, uncomfortable silence that reminded her that she no longer walked among the living.

Without any further words, she continued down the stairs, and like ever since she had passed on to the unsettling afterlife, she had not a single goal in her sight.

* * *

The sun was shining like it usually did, though for a certain person, this did not bring anything into her mind that reminded her of open meadows and beautiful roses. If anything, it somehow just reminded her even further of what was now missing in her life.

A friend, so close to her, so loved by her that she couldn't begin to describe it.

This girl was one of the survivors in the horrible incident. She had seen it all, felt the anger and resentment of the previously deceased, yet she had still been lucky to have kept breathing when she finally was able to escape the completely devastating place. And despite this, she had lost one of the two people who really made life worth living.

-''Naomi? Are you okay?" Came a whisper of a soft male voice from somewhere to the girl's left. She snapped her head up, startled at the mention of her first name, and immediately, instinctively, tried to force the sleepy blur out of her eyes. Though she couldn't see that well, she immediately recognized the voice.

-''Satoshi…" She said, voice sleep-drunken. "What… Happened?" She didn't at once recognize her surroundings, only that it was a large room with white walls and many tables. There was a small rustle in the background, like a lot of people were talking quietly at once. The girl, Naomi, shook her head rapidly, yawning in the progress. She could sense her friend Satoshi's presence a few inches away to her left, and she then realized that she had fallen asleep during class.

-''You feel asleep." Satoshi whispered to her, confirming her suspicions. A silent moan slipped out through her lips as she slowly, progressively made her way up from the pits of sleep she had fallen into previously. She sat up straight, one hand on her aching head and dishevelled short, brown hair.

-''What time is it?" She asked wearily, looking about the walls of the classroom in order to find a clock, but stopped when she remembered that this new teacher had a tendency to take the clock off the wall every lesson so that the student would focus more on the work that were on their hands.

Normally, before the horrible event, Satoshi sat a few desks away from her, but a recent position change by the teacher that had replaced Ms Yui had made the two of them sit next to each other. Naomi often found herself picking up on the cologne he used every morning before he came to school, and the shampoo he used for his hair.

Just as often, Naomi had to snap herself out of this state of being before she was discovered and thoroughly embarrassed.

Going to school on an almost daily basis was hard enough as it was. Satoshi was now her only real, close friend. Sure, she and the other four survivors of the massacre that was the cursed machine of Heavenly Host Elementary school were now closer to each other than they had ever been before, but the relationship between her and Satoshi was even deeper than that. They had been friends ever since back in kindergarten, where they had first met during a fruit break and sitting next to each other at one of the tables. Ever since that, they had talked almost daily, and as the years passed, they became closer and closer. Sure, they usually joked and messed with each other, not to mention a few… Embarrassingly intimate moments, but now Naomi felt like he was the only person she still had.

As if the blasted machine's curse wasn't enough to begin with, it had one further, horrific cog with a side effect. Any soul that fell in its halls would forever and ever be deleted from all of existence, all traces of their persons simply vaporized into thin air. This had thus happened to the four deceased victims, and the only ones who could remember them were the five who had returned alive from there.

This had taken quite a toll on the young girl Naomi.

She didn't have anyone she could go to for support. Deemed mentally unstable by even her own mother, the death and erasing from existence of her best friend Seiko, another one of the poor souls trapped in those halls, had caused her mind to huddle up and close itself off from much of the outside world. Since no one could remember Seiko but her and the four others, no one believed her when she talked about said deceased soul.

-''Naomi…" Satoshi could only whisper her name, painstakingly aware of the constant pain she was forced to go through every day. It hurt him greatly to see her like this.

-"I'm okay, Satoshi…" Naomi replied to him, rubbing her sleep-deprived eyes sluggishly. She then managed to make herself smile at her friend, doing her best to reassure him that she was doing well.

At the same time, she knew that he probably wasn't buying it. They had known each other for so long that they practically knew how the other one worked. Naomi knew that Satoshi understood what a burden the loss of her best friend Seiko was on her shoulders, and that this gloomy, silent attitude wasn't at all part of her usual demeanour.

Satoshi looked on silently, waiting for her to continue, if she would.

-''But I miss Seiko… So much…" She said, a bit louder than she had intended due to her voice cracking a bit. A nearby student snapped her head up in attention, having heard the name of the supposedly imaginary friend of the girl.

When the group had gone to school the next day, they were limitlessly shocked to see that their deceased friends had been erased from existence. Neither student nor teacher had recognized the names they had mentioned, and they had been effectively deemed as crazy by not only a few of their fellow classmates, but also by people from adjacent classes as well.

-"The crazy bitch is at it again…" Satoshi could pick up the voice of a female student from somewhere behind him, whispering to her friends, and he was about to get up from his seat and tell her to back off, but someone beat him to it.

-''Hey, don't say things like that! Mind your own business!" Another female voice piped up, and Satoshi turned his head to see a fairly short, blue-haired girl glaring daggers at the girl who had just expressed herself with words uncalled for. Though the "culprit", so to speak, was a few good inches taller than the blue-haired girl, it seemed like it was the other way around.

It was their class representative, Ayumi, another survivor of the godforsaken event.

The class representative in question walked over and situated herself in front of the girl she had just addressed. She was soon joined by another student who had apparently overheard the entire thing, and the atmosphere in the classroom had quickly turned from relaxed to fairly nasty.

The newly arrived in the group student was a tall male, with bleached hair and the usual male school uniform, a dark grey jacket which covered a white shirt. Under this, he wore a red t-shirt. His pants were also dark grey, and he didn't look amused.

-''That's enough. Back off." The boy said, trying his best to remain calm. If there was one thing he was sensitive about at this state of mind, it was anyone trying to harass one of his friends. Even though they weren't the closest, this boy definitely considered Naomi his friend.

-''Wow, Kishinuma. Why do you hang out with these losers anyway?" The girl who had first started this was around seventeen, possibly slightly younger, and she was fairly tall for her age, compared to other female students in this class. She had always been quite bashful in her nature, and this was apparently another of those times where she decided to exact this behaviour.

-"That doesn't concern you, Hayamoto. Just stop it." The boy called Kishinuma Yoshiki growled, and the teacher of the classroom who had recently been helping another student with something came over to check on the situation. Naomi had buried her head into her arms, tears threatening to burst out though her eyes due to all the stress.

Thankfully, the situation was quickly cleared up, and Ayumi, the class representative, went back to her seat. Satoshi, who had remained seated down and comforting Naomi, faced the tall boy.

-''Hey, thanks, Yoshiki." He said with a smile that Yosjiki returned.

-''No problem. Is Nakashima okay?" He asked worriedly, Naomi looking up at him upon hearing him say her name.

-''Y-Yeah, I'm good." She said, the lump in her throat hurting her. "Thanks, Kishinuma." He smiled at her before going back to his own seat. Satoshi once again faced her, putting a comforting hand on her shoulder.

-"Everything will be fine. I promise."

**(A/N: I might be able to write more tomorrow. Tell me what you think.)**


	3. Guilt

**Chapter 3: Guilt**

She was the core. She was the most vital piece of the machine. She made everything connect together.

And now she was put out of commission.

The machine disassembled, if only temporary. However, it was just enough time for the brave group of youths to make their way to the only exit it had; a small opening, a small rift in a sort of time/space dimension that harbored a very faint, very thin bridge that connected the cursed machine together with the normal world.

It was very faint, but it was enough.

But the core…

The core had finally been put to rest. After all the years of upholding the machine, she was finally put to rest and able to move on to a silent, content sleep, when she had finally, after all that time, been able to come to terms with her own death, and being able to forgive her culprit for forcefully taking her life.

But being the very young girl she was, her mind was fragile, in a shattered, sensitive mind, never having been really mended after what had happened to her all those years ago.

She spent much of her time in the light she deemed safe, far away from the dark shadows that lurked in the corners tucked away in the most hidden folds of her own mind. Whenever they could, they would pounce on her and eat away at her, and she wanted to scream and cry and shout and call for her mother and wanted the horrible pain to end.

She knew she could find her mother in that light. She knew she would be there when she needed her, and she knew that she could count on her mother for support.

-''Sachi-chan…'' A soft as velvet voice whispered from within the light. She wanted to go there, get into the light, get to the source of the voice, just grab onto her mother and hug her and hug her and hide from the shadows and never let go and be there forever, but she knew she couldn't… They would hold her back; they would use her mortal weakness against her.

And the guilt she felt, oh the guilt, for taking countless, innocent souls that were just in the same situation that she had once been… Frightened, confused, completely helpless in their unknown endeavor.

-''It wasn't your fault, Sachi-chan…'' The girl core Sachiko wanted to touch her mother's soft as silk skin and hear her voice forever and ever until the end of days, and she would finally feel safe, untouched and unharmed by the predatory demons of her own darkness.

But how? How could she redeem herself and let go of the guilt that tormented her very mind. All those souls… All the innocent lives she had so carelessly, so selfishly taken, just to satisfy her own murderous demeanor… How could she find forgiveness from anyone for such actions, such vile commitments?

She wanted to be with her mother, just run away from it all, but she was the one responsible for all this despair.

She was the _core_.

**(A/N: Here you go, a little insight into Sachiko's afterlife. I'll see if I can get another chapter up quickly.)**


	4. Research

**Chapter 4: Research**

Yoshiki Kishinuma had always been rather fond of Ayumi Shinozaki. Even before the incident, he had harbored some kind of liking for her. Perhaps they hadn't been the closest of friends, but they certainly had interactions. The first time they met, when Ayumi had stood up for him against their Physical Education's teacher after getting caught smoking, however, was an occasion that would never, ever slip his mind.

Yoshiki Kishinuma had had problems in his home for quite a while. His relations with his parents never were the best. Yoshiki had never really understood why this was the case, because as far as he knew, his parents had loved him like any good parent would, and still, it had simply gone into a somewhat unstable relationship. Maybe it was somehow connected to the birth of his younger sister, but ever since it got too much and Yoshiki moved out from his apartment, gotten of his own, and then even a part/time job, he stopped wondering about it, seeing as it really wouldn't do him any good to waste both time and energy pondering on it.

And even though his younger sister visited him from time to time, he had never been close to any member of his family, not even her.

Yoshiki was in the last period of school for the day, which was a history class about the second World War. Yoshiki had never been particularly interested in history, but he figured that since he had come to the school in the first place today, he might as well hold out for the last few minutes that were left. He'd hurry to get to his job as soon as this was over. Would he have some luck, he'd at least get some work done.

His gaze wandered off in a certain direction, trailing the desks until it rested upon the back of a blue-haired girl's neck. Ever since the incident with the cursed machine, they had been closer than before to each other. Of course, he would still spend time with his best friend, Satoshi Mochida. At times, he even ran into Satoshi's little sister Yuka, who had also been with them in the incident.

As far as he figured, he might very well have started developing a certain feeling of attraction to Ayumi. Almost like a moth to a lamp, in a way: He was constantly chasing after something he knew he had a snowball's chance in hell of getting.

Granted, a friendship was better than nothing, or even just acquaintances, was it not?

-"I'd like you to read the last of the pages until Monday, students." His homeroom teacher, the one who had filled in the completely missing and erased from existence Yui Shishido, Makoto Shima's voice rung in his ears, rebounding from the walls of the classroom so it sounded like the voice was coming from all possible directions thinkable. Yoshiki found himself staring at the back of Ayumi's head, and had to forcefully tear his gaze away.

Makoto Shima was an okay teacher, Yoshiki figured, much better than certain others he had had the displeasure of meeting, but not even he could make Yoshiki tolerate that much. Yoshiki would go as fast as he could to get to his job. Maybe he would read those pages, if he had the time and energy to do so.

If he would be at the school on Monday, that was.

As the students all got up from their seats and gather their things, Yoshiki found himself rapidly walking towards Ayumi. He wanted to talk to her, check on her, see how she was doing, seeing as she didn't seem to be herself lately.

-"Hey, Shinozaki." Yoshiki said, and actually had a thought for a moment if he would ever get to call her Ayumi. The girl in question perked her head up at the mention of her own surname, and it was then Yoshiki saw how bad she was actually faring.

Her eyes were almost sunken in nature, and there were the tell-tale small pits under them that gave it all away.

-"Hm? Oh… Hey, Kishinuma." She replied to him, her voice somewhat hoarse. It didn't take long for Yoshiki to identify the problem.

Sleep deprivation. Couldn't be anything else.

-"Shinozaki… Are you alright?" Yoshiki murmured as he looked down at her, her darkened green-blue eyes having lost the usual spark of determination that was a common sight in them. Yoshiki couldn't help feel his heart lurch at seeing her like this. If she didn't stop whatever it was that kept her from sleeping, it could turn out pretty badly.

-"Uh… Well, I guess." She said, a yawn immediately following. If Yoshiki knew Ayumi correctly, and he supposed he did, and probably had something to do with all that freaky occult stuff she was so into.

Yoshiki tilted his head a bit, still looking at her. He wasn't really a doctor, though he had had to do some… Patching up in the past. However, Yoshiki wouldn't deem a person who looked like their eyes were about to disappear into their skull to be alright.

-"Why do you care, anyway?" Ayumi's somewhat bristling voice caught Yoshiki off guard. Sure, she usually spoke to him in that tone of voice when they had been in Heavenly Host, that horrible machine that spent every living wake of its existence killing innocent souls and devouring them for its own pleasure, and even more so the few couple of times when Ayumi had been possessed, but now that they were back in the real world, he didn't understand why. Back there, everything had really gotten to her in ways unimaginable, but now…?

Yoshiki suppressed a startled noise as she huffed and put all her remaining things in her bag, leaving the classroom afterwards. He stood there, dumbstruck, for a few moments before snapping himself out of it and following her out through the doorway, approaching her again.

-"Shinozaki!" He exclaimed. This deprivation must have really been getting to her. "Why aren't you getting any sleep?" Ayumi slowly turned around to look at him. For a few seconds there, Yoshiki thought she was about to lash out at him, but she eventually just inhaled deeply, sighed and sat herself down on a nearby bench in the hallway. Many of the other students were leaving the building in pairs or groups of three, but Ayumi didn't really have anyone.

Ayumi Shinozaki was fairly certain she had a crush on the boy Satoshi Mochida. All her childhood and through early teenage, her mother Asuka had always warned her about the default nature of men, and how they never remained faithful for very long. Ayumi's mother had often resorted to calling them "beasts of lust", who didn't really care about love itself, but rather they went for the form with the biggest chest. Ayumi hadn't really understood her reasoning at first, but as she spent more and more time among males of various sorts, she gradually realized what her mother had been laying down for her.

In Ayumi's world, there were pretty much only three types of men: the Mochida type, the Kishinuma type and then finally the Morishige type. The Kishinuma type was the men her mother Asuka had told to avoid affiliation with; those men were delinquents, sometimes cowards, who were really often up to no good. Then, there was the Morishige type. The type of man that never did anything, rather just sitting there in the background, silent, and spending all his time on a single, or possibly two in rare cases, person.

And lastly, there was the Mochida type. The type of guy that was good-looking, kind-hearted, and also guaranteed to simply stay with the woman he was with. Ayumi figured that Satoshi wouldn't ever dream of cheating on her should they ever end up being together, but there were other obstacles as well, not just unfaithfulness. There was also, oh… For instance, Nakashima.

Ayumi had often compared herself to Naomi. Frankly, she though that Naomi would have a much bigger chance at capturing Satoshi's heart than any other girl in class 2-9, or any other class too, for that matter. Naomi was definitely more attractive, she was taller and prettier, and not to mention her chest… Ayumi wouldn't ever been able to start competing with that.

Ayumi had almost forgotten that Yoshiki was there until she heard him clear his throat. Not in annoyance, but rather that of a gesture of reminding. She snapped her head up in attention and looked at him.

-"Kishinuma… Now isn't the best time." She couldn't really think of anything else to say. All she wanted to do now was more than likely go home, lie down and maybe talk to her mother or something of that liking. Sure, Kishinuma was nice in wanting to know how she was faring, but Ayumi really didn't feel like conversing with anyone at this state.

However, what she really did in order to put herself in such a distressed state of being was what took many hours of both day and night.

Ever since they had gotten back from the cursed machine, Ayumi had fervently put her mind into finding some kind of magic charm or spell or whatever to try and somehow bring back her friends from the dead, or at least try and bring back the traces of their once-existence, or anything that allowed their friends to be remembered by not only the ones who had been there and back.

-"Oh, okay… Well, tell me if you need anything." Kishinuma said awkwardly, rubbing his neck with one hand. He didn't really have anything with him, neither in his hands or in his locker, and so he could just leave immediately, without the need to gather anything. Rather frankly, he figured that he probably should leave pretty much as soon as he could, but he felt like he couldn't just turn his back on Ayumi. Not after all the things they had gone through together in the awful place. Ayumi faintly smiled at him before getting up on shaky feet.

-"I will, Kishinuma. Thanks." Ayumi couldn't help but appreciate his kindness. She also felt a little ashamed because of the fact that all the time they had been in the damned school, Yoshiki had done nothing but help her, while she had been constantly bashing on him, letting her frustrations and anger and sadness and resent out on him, and the way he kept sticking with her and never left her and always helping her…

Ayumi's confused thoughts never ceased their crazed swirling inside the young girl's head as she walked her way home. 

* * *

More silence…

Silence, silence, silence, silence, SILENCE!

Damnit.

Sakutaro Morishige wouldn't actually appear as a ghost, hadn't it been for his characteristic blue glow and somewhat disfigured left face half. The pain he felt at his death had two very different, very powerful sides to it…

The physical pain was bearable. Sakutaro knew that getting your head repeatedly smashed against a wooden wall and then glass actually was fairly pleasant, compared to the way some other poor souls with their lives taken from them had passed on. In fact, he was actually quite satisfied with his own death.

He could look at corpses, including his own, all he wanted now.

But the mental pain, the psychological pain, that pain…

It was excruciating.

Sakutaro Morishige had never cared much for other people, save for himself and another person, very dear and special to him…

He could still remember her clearly… Both her past and current forms.

He had first found her when going to the local drama club of his school. He hadn't exactly known why, but they had just clicked somehow. Ever since then, they had been really close, even so that this special girl had given him his very own nickname…

_Shige-nii…_

His heart lurched. He wouldn't ever find her again, he imagined. He would spend the rest of eternity, tortured by immense, never-ending insanity.

All alone…

_Mayu…_

**(A/N: There. I'll start writing the next chapter immediately. Let's see when it comes up.)**


	5. Support

**Chapter 5: Support**

Ayumi flipped through the seemingly endless pages of another book about mystical charm she had found in the local library, and it was getting late in the night again. She had discovered all kinds of different magic rituals and spells, but she couldn't find a single one that would tell about how to bring life back into a deceased person.

Nor anything about how to restore erased existence.

She must have thoroughly gone through four or five different books right now, all very different and all about black magic and spell casting. There were even instructions on how to extract a soul from a dying person, how to lay all kinds of curses, how to convert physical energy into tissue-repairing substance, vice-versa, and much more.

But still nothing about any form of revival.

Ayumi tried repeatedly to tell herself that there wasn't exactly a great hurry in this endeavour, but she also felt like she couldn't just sit back while her dear friends were completely lost, suffering all kinds of horrible fates. She simply had to keep trying. For them.

But Yoshiki had been right. This had really taken a toll on her body, both physically and mentally. She didn't have as much energy, as much will, as she had had before she had started doing her research. She had been staying up way more late than what anyone would have deemed healthy, getting only a very slim amount of hours of sleep every night, and always after page after page of fruitless church. So Yoshiki was very much right in his assumption that she wasn't quite all right.

She had been quite efficient in disguising her sleep deprivation this far, but she knew it was only a matter of time before she couldn't take the pressure anymore. She'd most likely just drop down, sleeping, in the middle of some important test they would have to write.

That spelled out plain bad news. Her parents would be very displeased.

She had to do something about this. Take a break? Probably…

-"Onii-chan!" The first voice Satoshi heard as soon as he stepped through the door to his home belonged to a person that meant a lot to him. She was a few years younger than him, though to an unfamiliar eye, she might as well have been taken for a lot younger.

-"Hey, Yuka!" Satoshi greeted his sister cheerfully as he set his backpack down on the floor, next to the wall. Yuka stepped out into the hallway, and immediately rushed towards Satoshi, holding her arms out. Satoshi laughed, and tightly hugged her. He then got up again before his mother appeared in the doorway.

-"Welcome home, dear." His mother Miho mused at him with a smile. Satoshi walked over to his mother and hugged her, giving a kiss on the cheek. "How was school today, sweetie?"

Satoshi felt his air get caught in his throat momentarily, but he came up with an excuse quickly. He knew his mother couldn't be told about their tour and retour to the cursed machine, he simply had to hide what had had happened at the school with Naomi and everything.

-"It was great… I had a really fun day." Satoshi remembered that Yuka had been sick the day before, and so to prevent further spreading of her disease, she stayed home, even one day after she was seemingly well again.

-''Did you spend time with Nakashima?" Her mother asked with a somewhat sly grin and a wink, and Satoshi blushed somewhat before bursting into a nervous chuckle. Yuka giggled at his reaction to her mother teasing him and Satoshi awkwardly put a hand up to his neck.

-''Mom…! Uh, well…" Truth be told, Satoshi had spent a lot of time with Naomi lately, and it wasn't something he would regret. He enjoyed being with her, being in her presence, having her as company.

Satoshi guessed it was just part of it to be messed around with by both family and other friends alike.

-"I bet you two really had some good time together, onii-chan!" Yuka chirped, and Satoshi's blush only got worse as he grinned light-heartedly at his little sister's humorous comment. He smiled, ruffled her hair and looked right at her.

-''Ah, Yuka…" He sighed playfully and put an arm around her shoulder, patting her on the back, being met with another of the little girl's almost "trademark" giggles.

Yoshiki deemed it may have been a risky move, outside the obvious fact that it could have been taken the wrong way. However, since there weren't really anyone else who was going to step up and try to help, he figured he just had to do something.

He had just received his salary for the month. He hadn't planned on it, but he ended up working extra time at the music store he had been employed at. Before this particular job, he had tried a few others, but due to several various factors, he felt like he didn't quite enjoy the site he worked at. He tried to stick with it, but after a while, it just didn't work out, so he had drifted from job to job, all the while having school to think of from time to time, and also to be mindful of his apartment.

But Yoshiki figured that this might have been an action worth risking. Shinozaki was clearly suffering.

He made a slight noise of reluctance as he checked the amount of money he had. It would be fine; he could do with the extra cost. It wouldn't mind him. The small loss wouldn't affect his own living.

With a deep breath, Yoshiki put his money deep in his wallet, which he made sure to keep safe, just in case, before continuing his work for the day by standing by the cash register, for the moment.

_

The next day, school was very much like it always was. There were a few lessons, but nothing new turned up and there weren't, fortunately, any tests or anything like that around the corner. As soon as Makoto announced the end of the lesson and the day, Yoshiki immediately got up from his seat, quickly gathering all of his stuff in a bag he had. He saw that Ayumi hadn't gotten up from her seat yet, so he was fairly certain he wouldn't run the risk of losing her in the crowd of students.

-"…I know, right?" He picked up the voice of one of the girls in the class, Hayamoto, the one who had insulted Naomi the day before. Seems like the only good she ever was up to was picking on others for their flaws and then gossip. "…He is so stupid to stay with a group of people like that! A guy like Kishinuma could get so much better!" Usually, Yoshiki didn't really care about what others said about him, what they thought about him, what he did or what he liked, but now…

-''Do you have something to say to me, _Hayamoto_?" Yoshiki spat her name like it was a foul taste in his mouth, clenching his fist and doing his best to keep an even voice. Upon hearing her name being spoken, Hayamoto Kusaki spun around, standing in the doorway of the classroom, shifting her position to let the other student through. Her two friends visibly backed away a bit, but they remained silent. Yoshiki glared daggers at the girl he had just addressed, and said girl didn't look like she was about to back down. Ayumi had stopped what she was doing and was looking up from her desk, watching the two have some kind of stand-off. Satoshi and Naomi had been about to get up from their seats as well, having put their books in their bags, but now they stood where they were, regarding Yoshiki with uncertainty.

Hayamoto huffed and took a step out of the classroom. She gave him a rude gesture with her middle finger before disappearing out into the hallway. Yoshiki gritted his teeth tightly, and he considered following her out in the hallway to give her a piece of his mind, but he managed to calm himself down. His breathing was heavy, and he regarded the doorway Hayamoto had just stood in with a glare that made it seem like the doorway was his greatest enemy.

He only calmed down significantly when he sensed Ayumi's appearance at his side. Almost all the students had drained out from the classroom, eager to get to their respective homes to begin the weekends. Only Satoshi, Ayumi, Naomi and Yoshiki were still there.

-''What was that all about, Yoshiki?" Satoshi asked him cautiously, somewhat afraid of accidentally tripping a sore wire. Yoshiki turned his head towards his shorter friend and let out a tired sigh.

-''Hayamoto's giving the bull again. She started trash-talking you guys." Yoshiki admitted, feeling perhaps a little ashamed to show that he cared about his friends so much. Satoshi blinked and made a noise, but then smiled and patted Yoshiki's shoulder with his, a friendly gesture that was supposed to be reassuring.

-"Don't mind Hayamoto, Yoshiki. She's always been like this, even before you joined our class." Satoshi explained, and out of the corner of his eye, he saw both Ayumi and Naomi nod their heads and he could hear the two utter confirmatory noises. He sighed once more but then shrugged it off, not wanting to spend some of his already limited energy on screaming at careless, harsh people.

-"Ah, forget her." He grumbled, slowly unclenching his fist and letting the fingers hang limply by his side.

-"That's the spirit, Kishinuma!" Ayumi beamed at him, and even though she looked like she hadn't slept at all for the latest three days in a row, Yoshiki couldn't help the warmth spreading throughout his body whenever she looked at him or even said his name. He smiled faintly, and when Satoshi urged him to exit the classroom, Ayumi already had done so, and the idea of what Yoshiki would be try to do suddenly slipped into the first priority of his mind.

-"Shinozaki?" He called out, and was satisfied to hear her reply in the form of a short "Hm?" She returned to the classroom, obviously a bit annoyed by the fact that something was keeping her from getting home and actually getting some work on finding the right charm done. She couldn't live with herself if she didn't do everything in her might in order to help the deceased souls of her dear friends. After all, she was the one responsible for their deaths; if she hadn't gone about searching for stupid charms, then the four beloved ones would still be breathing, would still be standing by their sides. Maybe not Sakutaro as much as the others, but still. They had actually usually enjoyed Sakutaro's company, due to his silent and calm demeanour.

Then again, it _was_,in fact,Naho Saenoki, a high school girl who was very into paranormal activities, who had started spreading all the info about the charm in the first place. If anyone was to blame, it was her. Ayumi would deem it as one of the most selfish actions she had ever been unfortunate enough to be involved in, and she would have expected the same opinions from most different people she knew, would she have told them about it.

-"What is it, Kishinuma?" She wasn't hesitant to allow her annoyance to be seen. She was tired, hungry and so determined to continue her research that she felt like her brain had turned into a book about mystical things, and that her eyes could perceive colourful, dancing runes of some sort in front of them. While Satoshi and Naomi exited the classroom, saying quick goodbyes to them, Yoshiki took a slight step forward.

-"Well, Shinozaki… I've been thinking about something…" Yoshiki began awkwardly, rubbing his neck with one hand, but doing his best to keep his stature. Ayumi stood, somewhat impatiently, and awaited his continuation. "Maybe you should take a break from whatever it is you're doing and get some sleep?"

Yoshiki mentally kicked himself in the face. This wasn't at all how he planned to say this.

-"Hm? Oh… Well… I'm not sure I can…" Ayumi began, looking down at a spot on the floor. She guessed the signs and consequences of her actions had been far more apparent than what she had first realized. It did touch her, somewhat, that Yoshiki actually seemed to care about her in a way that made him remark about her well-being, though.

Yoshiki felt somewhat frustrated at Ayumi's stubborn behaviour, but he managed to keep a straight face about it. He sighed and absent-mindedly put his hand in one pocket.

-"You see, I just got paid my salary, and my boss told me that I was off the entire weekend, so…" Yoshiki felt his own face flush as he was putting the situation down in front of her so that she could grasp it properly. As much as he thought it unlikely, he really hoped she would accept his offer. ''Maybe… You'd like to do something? Like… Put your mind away from what it is you're doing?" He figured that would have to do it. He couldn't think of any additional way to formulate his words.

Ayumi was a bit hesitant at first. To her, it felt exactly like he was asking her out on a date. This lit a natural beacon deep inside her, and her mother's words of caution rung around inside her skull.

Then again, Yoshiki was actually right about the whole situation. Ayumi had stayed awake well into the night, studying the books she had found. When she simply couldn't stay awake any longer, she used the very last of her resources to put the book she was currently reading away, hide them somewhat, just so that her parents didn't ask her questions she didn't want to or just couldn't answer.

And… And…

Her sister, Hinoe…

The image of her death was still clear in her mind. What had happened before and after the occurrence itself was still dim to the level of impossibility of trying to remember, but the moment, that very second…

She had, along with Naomi, tried using some kind of weird spell book to revive her dead friends, and she also remembered that the two of them had found and travelled to the old Shinozaki estate, where Sachiko and her mother Yoshie had lived when they were alive. Ayumi didn't remember exactly what had happened during those few hours, but she knew at least that it had been a really tough nut to crack open.

After a completely failed attempt at using resurrecting black magic, the book she had been using for it apparently went out of her control, because before she knew it, the book apparently had deemed her a target, because within the very ounce of an instance, dark magic had started blasting about the room, hurting Ayumi and created dark spots all over her skin, literally marking her for death.

That was when Ayumi's sister Hinoe had first entered the room. Ayumi wasn't completely sure, but she figured Hinoe must have sensed the extreme spike in the black magic so that she had come to her sister's aid… And thus sacrificed herself.

Ayumi could still clearly remember those few, horrible seconds when her sister's blood-stained, beheaded corpse still embraced her with limp arms. Naomi, who had been present during the black magic spell as well, had crouched down on the floor, hugging her head and making herself into a ball.

Since that day, Ayumi had felt like all the people who really meant matters to her simply disappeared, dropping one after the other like flies. Yoshiki was right, though… She was in terrible condition, and it actually felt really nice to have someone that truly, deeply cared for you. To Ayumi, it seemed like Yoshiki really did.

Yoshiki stood in front of her, somewhat nervous. Sure, if she rejected his offer, it wasn't the end of the world. He'd be a little disappointed, but he'd get over it eventually.

-"Well… Ah, why not. Sure. Call me tomorrow." Ayumi responded, with such easiness and lack of reluctance that it actually surprised Yoshiki. However, he smiled at her, and she motioned toward the door.

-"Maybe I should get some sleep… Might be best." She said out loud to no one in particular, but understood that Yoshiki thought she had addressed him with it. He almost made a noise, but he suppressed it and simply smiled. When they split up outside the school, Yoshiki walked all the way home with a smile constantly on his face.

**(A/N: There, kind of long chapter. I'll see when the next one comes out.)**


	6. Advise

**(A/N: 'Nother chapter for ya. Enjoy.) **

**Chapter 6: Advise**

Before the incident at the cursed school, Satoshi Mochida had always regarded his relationship with Naomi Nakashima as an intimate friendship. They had been friends for a very long time, longer than most of the other people he knew.

For about ninety-nine percent of the time, Satoshi enjoyed Naomi's company to the fullest. Not only was she very kind to him most of the time, she was also, in Satoshi's eyes, extremely attractive. Satoshi had multiple times caught himself being in some kind of euphoric state, looking at her while she was doing a number of different things, like laughing with Seiko, scolding Yoshiki and asking Sakutaro what was up when he got frustrated with something.

However, the more time Satoshi had spent in the machine, the more his feelings for Naomi had developed. When they had explored the abandoned bomb shelter beneath the school itself, and where they had ultimately found their way out from the machine by putting the long-worn core to rest, Satoshi had found himself with such strong feelings for his tomboyish friend that he felt a nauseas warmth in the pit of his stomach. He didn't have to be a top notch biologist to figure out what that meant…

It was the human body's natural way of responding to a purely chemical reaction within the body when in near proximity with a very special person. It was love.

Satoshi usually didn't let ailments get him down. The few colds he had experienced in his life mostly kept him home from school a day or two at most, and he was quickly up on his feet and at it again. That was something which most of his classmates found highly admirable with him; his fantastic lesson attendance rate.

However, no matter how resilient he was when it came to afflictions and diseases, no one, not even he, could resist the side effects that came along with the phenomenon that was known as love…

Which was exactly the particular feeling that got him down on the last period of the day.

Satoshi sat right next to Naomi, due to a change in desk arrangements by the new teacher Makato. Had this been before the incident, it probably wouldn't have affected him half as much as it did now. Satoshi couldn't figure out why to save his life. His most probable guess was that this feeling had lied buried just beneath the surface for a somewhat long time, and that it had simply taken the opportunity to appear just at that moment, down in the abandoned bomb shelter. At this point, he wasn't exactly sure of what to make of it, either…

Probably the sudden change in his usual demeanour that made a certain friend of his approach him after the lesson, when all the students were starting to drain out of the 2-9 classroom.

-"Hey, Satoshi?" Yoshiki asked him with some concern. "You okay, man?" Satoshi lifted his gaze and looked at the taller, bleach-haired boy standing right by his desk. Satoshi blinked once and looked at him again.

-"Oh, hey, Yoshiki… Yeah, I'm okay. Why?" If it was the case, Satoshi hadn't even noticed himself that he had a slight change in behaviour. Both he and others usually deemed him as bright, cheerful and optimistic, but right now, he was actually pretty out of it, appearing fairly distracted most of the time and not very talkative, like he usually was.

-"Nah, I dunno, you just seemed kind of out of it during the class. You sure everything is okay?" Yoshiki asked again, throwing a quick side-glance at the entrance of the classroom. Satoshi smiled weakly at him, starting to get up from his desk.

-"Actually…" Satoshi began, adopting a somewhat saddened face expression at the still active nausea due to a certain feeling for a certain someone in a certain part of his body. He had begun contemplating talking to his friend about the matter, because quite frankly, even though Satoshi never had anything against any of his classmates, except for those who treated his friends badly, he also felt like there weren't that many people he could trust with telling all of his personal problems.

Seiko and Satoshi didn't always have much interaction, but when they did, it was usually just friendly chats and the occasional joke. Seiko was very fond of Satoshi, in a friendly way. The same was with Mayu and Ayumi.

Satoshi and Sakutaro didn't do much together, either. The one time they had truly really talked to each other was when they were assigned as a pair when working with an English project. Neither of them had anything against the other, though. Quite frankly, Satoshi respected Sakutaro for his seriousness and level headedness, while Sakutaro appreciated Satoshi's energy and will to work, unlike some other people he knew. Maybe they weren't the closest of friends at all, but they would certainly work together if the need was. Sakutaro had even complimented Satoshi on his reaction to Ayumi and Ms Yui's prank, and he had not hesitated to provide him with information when they met up in the cursed place when looking for clues.

Granted, Satoshi had caught Sakutaro taking pictures of a dead body, but he had decided to put it to the back of his mind at that time.

Of course, there was also Naomi, whom he often talked to about problems and things he wondered and thought about. As it had seemed, Naomi was never reluctant to answer his questions, which Satoshi was grateful for, but not even Naomi was suitable for all kinds of situations.

This being one of them.

-"Can I tell you on the way home?" Satoshi asked. Their homes were located in the same general area, so they could take the same path to a certain degree, only needing to split up at a point close to both of their homes.

Yoshiki regarded his friend with even more concern as he nodded a yes to the question.

-"Sure thing, man."

Satoshi sighed with relief at Yoshiki's confirmatory answer. He got up from his desk, propping his bag up on his back. Then, he suddenly felt a hand touch his shoulder. Somewhat still in his own thoughts about Naomi, he jumped a little and turned around.

-"Hey, Satoshi." Naomi turned out to still have been in the classroom. She must have heard his and Yoshiki's conversation.

She was standing very close to him. Satoshi actually enjoyed this closeness, mostly because he just really enjoyed Naomi's company. "Is something troubling you, Satoshi?" She asked. Satoshi cursed himself for being so apparent with his… Affliction. But he couldn't tell her. Not now, not since she was really the reason to it all.

-"Y-Yeah, I'm really okay. I was just going to walk with Yoshiki." Satoshi said quickly, hoping that Naomi hadn't heard the part about Satoshi actually confessing that something was indeed troubling him. Instead, Naomi just smiled brightly at him.

-"Oh, alright. But if anything happens, you know you can always talk to me." She said, almost sounding a little disappointed, before turning around and proceeding to leave the classroom. Just before leaving, she turned back to face the two boys standing next to one another.

-"Bye, Satoshi! Bye, Kishinuma!" She exclaimed cheerfully, almost sounding a bit forced, before leaving Satoshi and Yoshiki's fields of view.

It did not take long for Naomi to get home, and when she did, she simply left her backpack on the floor. Her mother wasn't home at the moment, so she wouldn't have to answer any stupid questions.

As soon as she reached her room, she threw herself onto her bed and started crying her eyes out, not even bothering to take her student uniform off.

_

Both Satoshi and Yoshiki looked after the young girl who had just exited the classroom.

-"Did… Nakashima seem a little strange to you?" Yoshiki asked after a few seconds of empty silence had passed. Satoshi kept his gaze locked on the doorway Naomi had just left through, and then turned to Yoshiki

-"I… Maybe Shinohara's absence is starting to make her lose it…" Satoshi said with his head hung somewhat low, his hand balled into a fist as his mind flashed back to the machine they had spent the most horrifying hours in their life at.

-"Could be…" Yoshiki agreed, raising one hand to rub his neck awkwardly. "I know how much Shinohara meant to her… And now that nobody except for us can remember her…" Satoshi could even feel a tear trying to fight its way out through his eye when he, too, thought about the poor souls who had fallen in those halls… Sure, he hadn't been the closest with any of them, but one was his teacher and the other three his friends. Or, somewhat, at least. Satoshi straightened up.

-"Let's go. Won't be any good standing around." He said, and Yoshiki couldn't do much but agree.

Well outside the school and on their way home, Satoshi decided to tell Yoshiki about his problem.

-"So, Yoshiki…" He began, earning the taller boy's attention. "Could we keep this between ourselves?" Satoshi knew that Yoshiki was very much trustworthy, but he really just wanted to make sure.

-"Sure thing, man." Yoshiki replied, not really having anything else to say. Satoshi took a deep breath.

-"You see… It's about Naomi, actually…" He began sheepishly, unsure of how to present his problem. Yoshiki raised an eyebrow, somewhat confused. He did feel like he did have a hunch of what it was about, though.

-"Hm? What about Nakashima?" Yoshiki asked, his curiosity perked. Satoshi had his hands in his pocket, and his gaze drilled into the ground. When he looked up again, Yoshiki could see in his eyes that he was indeed troubled by something, which he had assured Naomi that he wasn't minutes ago.

-"I…" Satoshi began timidly. "I think I've fallen for her… Quite a lot…" He explained, and Yoshiki nearly choked on his own breath. He managed to suppress it, though, and patted his friend on the back, perhaps harder than he would have intended, and let out a huge laugh.

-"Haha! Nice going, Satoshi!" He exclaimed exasperatedly, and Satoshi grunted as his friend's hand made contact with his back. Had it been any harder, Satoshi figured he'd probably have the air knocked out of his lungs. At some times, Yoshiki was a bit stronger than he realized.

-"Hng…" He groaned, quite surprised at Yoshiki's enthusiastic reaction to the news he had told him. "I just…" He found himself unable to say anything; he was at a loss of words.

-"Well, it's understandable. She's pretty hot." Yoshiki said quite bluntly, and Satoshi reacted as he had expected.

-"Y-Yoshiki!" He raised his voice a bit, his cheeks a bright shade of red. He then looked around instinctively, wondering if anyone else was nearby and if so they had heard him. Thankfully, there wasn't, so he just exhaled in a somewhat feeling of relief.

Yoshiki instead delivered to him a load of pearling laughter.

-"Relax, man! I'm just messing with you." He still laughed as he excused himself for his recent behaviour. Satoshi couldn't help but laugh a little himself, somewhat refreshed to experience Yoshiki's cheerful demeanour for a change.

-"It's just… She might not even feel the same…" Satoshi then said, brought back to sadness a bit with this fact. Yoshiki's still persisting laughter died down quickly as he was presented with the actual amount that this problem was getting to his brown haired friend. Yoshiki sighed and placed his hand on Satoshi's shoulder, with much more ease this time, as a gesture of friendship and, if it would be perceived that way, comfort.

-"Eh. If she doesn't, there's not really much you can do, is there?" He wasn't sure what to say, so Yoshiki just settled with one of the cheesiest lines ever known to mankind. Satoshi sighed, and they had now reached the point where they had to split up, so they bid their goodbyes to one another.

_

Thankfully, Ayumi didn't live that far away from school. If she hurried, and she always did, she could make it to the school in just about half an hour. Of course, the trains she used to get there weren't always on time, and that's why she was a little late home this Monday afternoon.

-"Welcome home, Ayumi!" Her mother Asuka called from within the apartment as she stepped in through the door. Ayumi took off her jacket and hung it up on the rack like she always. Then, she neatly put her backpack against the wall and walked into the living room. Asuka was sitting on the couch, and though she had already discovered it, the fact that everyone except for her and the others who had survived Heavenly Host had forgotten her existence, it still hit her like a brick in the face. Hinoe had always been a conduit of support for Ayumi whenever she experienced problems, and now that she wasn't around anymore…

-"Hi, mom!" Ayumi said as cheerfully as she could manage, mind the circumstances, hugging her mother and kissing her forehead.

-"How was school today?"

Ayumi would answer, like she always would, that it had been completely fine and that nothing special had happened, but she eventually figured against it. There was actually something on her mind, and she felt like right now, she needed to vent a bit. Normally, she'd probably have spoken to Hinoe about it, but since she was now another deceased soul at the hands of power black magic, her mother was really the only one left she could speak to. She did feel like she wanted to keep this out of her group of friends and just have it stay between her and her mom.

-"It was… Good." Ayumi began, making up her mind on bringing up her feelings about Satoshi. "Mom, how did you and dad get together?" Ayumi didn't know where the question came from, but it strangely felt like a natural way of starting a conversation of that type, unexpected and without any forewarning as it was.

Upon hearing the sudden question, Asuka looked up at her daughter, curiosity perked.

-"Hm? Why do you want to know?" She asked, but not in a way that suggested that she found it an annoying or unnecessary question. Ayumi folded her hands behind her back, walking over to the couch in order to sit down.

-"Well… I just got curious, I guess." Ayumi explained, but that wasn't the whole truth. Nevertheless, she was really eager to hear about this, because as far as she was certain, her mother hadn't told much at all of her life before Ayumi had been born.

-"Very well, then." Her mother said, her soft voice working well together with the warm smile she showed Ayumi. "I met him at the place I worked around, as an archivist of some kind; I sorted out a lot of document, exactly nineteen years ago. I was generally very distrustful of men; they're simply cheaters, it's in their blood, but somehow, this particular man felt very different." Ayumi held her breath as her mother told a tale she hadn't before had the pleasure to hear. Though, she still knew and understood the perspective her mother had, the mostly deceptive nature of men was something she had heard much about.

-"He would always open doors for me when we crossed paths, and whenever I had trouble with carrying things, he would always help me. Eventually, he offered to buy lunch for the two of us, and although I was hesitant at first, I decided to give him a chance. Before I knew it, I had fallen head over heels for him. My mother even warned me about the nature of men, and though I had had unfaithful boyfriends before, I couldn't help feeling secure with your father." Ayumi didn't say a word as she listened to Asuka's previously untold story.

-"A year after I met him, you were born, and mark my words; you were such a beautiful little girl… Of course, you still are." Ayumi couldn't help but let out a short "Mom…" But Asuka wasn't fazed. "And shortly after you were born, we got married. And that's the story up to today!" Asuka finished happily, as if she had just told her entire life in a few minutes.

In some perspectives, she might as well have.

Ayumi tried to suppress a noise that seemed to be a mix between relief and anxiousness. Her own love life was somewhat on the bad side, seeing as the only singly guy she was interested in clearly had a similar interest in another girl.

-"Was there something else you wanted to know about?" Her mother's question brought her back to the present, and she shook her head lightly. She would see if she would tell her mother about Satoshi, but she didn't feel like now was the best time.


	7. Darkening

**(A/N: Massive filler chapter ahead.)**

**Chapter 7: Darkening**

The girl spirit wasn't sure at all how much time she had spent doing this, walking and walking and walking and walking through all the bloodied, echoing halls without stop and without any apparent intent. She figured that this would be her destiny, to forever wander the empty, lonely halls while constantly carrying the pain, the sensation of having the hardest time in the world just to draw vital oxygen into the lungs, every waking second spent as if choking, again and again…

Wherever she turned her gaze, there were either one of two things she could see; it was either the recently deceased corporeal forms of new arrivals, or the faint outline of other spirits who had suffered a similar fate, their poor souls imprisoned and tortured for all eternity, having fallen to the dark presence in the halls and roaming aimlessly, killing all they could get their ephemeral hands on.

She tightly pressed her eyes closed, ghastly tears threatening to break out through her eyelids. Her body should not still have been working, but it happened nonetheless, and the grief lied like a heavy blanket over her shoulder. She wasn't as sad for her own part, that she herself had died, but rather of those she had left living upon her departure into this torturous afterlife. She could only pray that they would still remember her, and not let her memory sink into the deep abysses of despair that had been left behind by their deaths.

Seiko Shinohara always held the face of that one girl close to her heart, always thinking about her and the joy she had given her by just existing in her life. They had been so good friends, so close, and Seiko had loved that girl dearly and deeply, even in the very last dying breaths of her life.

She had died by that girl's hands.

But Seiko couldn't ever possibly find it in her being to hold anger or grudge alike towards this action, how unjust or brutal it may have been perceived as. As her poor spirit still came to terms with her death, she could both see and sense all the grief, sadness and anger that was practically radiating from her still living best friend's body, like a glowing flame in an ice cold cave.

Seiko had of course been completely taken off her guard when she had encountered her friend Naomi somewhere between where they had split up and the lavatories on the third floor. Seiko had immediately seen that there was something wrong with her hot headed companion, but the happiness that walked hand in hand with their reunion unfortunately made Seiko push that notion to the very back of her head.

It became her doom.

Things had started going downhill when Naomi, who hadn't responded to Seiko's calls, started grabbing Seiko violently by the arms, possessing a strength that Naomi would have deemed close to inhuman. Her hands and fingers had dug so hard into the clothing and skin of her arms that she suspected she would get a few nasty bruising. Not knowing at all what was going on, Seiko had started freaking out as Naomi grabbed her, trying to fight off her grip but finding strength faltering, and she was powerless as Naomi started literally hauling her off.

After a while, they had reached the lavatories. Seiko had very dim memories of what had happened from that point onward to her death, but she knew there had been a lot of screaming from her own accord as she was powerlessly being shoved into one of the stalls of the girl's lavatories, and then how the dreadful noose had been wrapped around her neck, already squeezing some of the air out of her lungs, before she had even begun hanging. Then, Naomi, still in her completely silent, transfixed state of being, had neatly put her shoes, just beneath her, before having kicked the bucket she had stood her up on out from underneath her feet, immediately making the rope seize her neck, sending waves of pain and panic and confusion all throughout her body. She was kicking and thrashing, but she couldn't bring herself to use her arms to try and do something about the situation. During her final moments, everything she saw was the face of her murderer, hearing in the distance a voice screaming in despair.

And then, she had, against all that she would have thought, become calmer and calmer the closer death came.

Finally, when the darkness wrapped around the last active parts of her consciousness, she found herself praying that Naomi would be safe and make it out of here alive, even though her own life would now be permanently lost the dark recluses of death's void.

Seiko found herself thinking about her more than anything else. She at least knew that Naomi had indeed made it out; despite the fact that she had so unfortunately fallen in the halls of the cursed machine, her soul restless and filled with sorrow, her spirit was still roaming the empty halls, unperceivable to the naked eye alone, but still with the ability to reach out and touch the consciousness of the still living beings. She would do anything to ensure Naomi's safety and survival, even going so far as to contact the awake and alert mind of Satoshi Mochida, telling him that he needed to make haste to find Naomi, for his presence would surely be the only cure compatible with the madness and insanity that was dawning on the girl in question, due to her so very close friend's death.

This had been enough for Seiko to get her to feel like her death wasn't the most horrible thing that could occur. However, she also felt so, so stricken with guilt; she often pondered on whom of the two had been the most affected by her death. Clearly, though not walking longer among the living, Seiko was at least content with knowing that Naomi was safe and sound, and she'd rather have Satoshi as her closest friend than anyone else, any day of the week given.

Seiko wasn't at all sure that Naomi was anywhere close to content.

She dragged a pair of two heavy as lead feet along the ground, one hand pressed tightly to her chest. She let the ghostly tears fall in a cascade, sad at herself for letting Naomi down, and sat because she had left so many in the living life, and angry at the school for what it had done and angry at the spirits who had clearly seized hold of the girl's fragile mind, angry at everything for being so cruel to them.

Was it required, Seiko would have given her own life to protect Naomi's any day of the week, so long as she was guaranteed that this action would have Naomi safe.

Seiko guessed this was as close to safe she was ever going to get.

As she continued gasping for air in what felt like a sea of personal guilt and sorrow, Seiko could not even notice the dark, purely evil mist-like substance that had begun snaking her feet, seemingly having appeared from out of thin air, ever so carefully starting to wrap itself around her ankles, extremely slowly but surely working its way up her calves, along with every step the girl took.

* * *

For Mayu Suzumoto, she had experienced nothing but fear and despair the moments before her gruesome death. She had always been a kindred, compassionate soul who never judged, and always did everything she could to help someone, friend, acquaintance or even stranger.

This had, too, been her doom.

In the cursed machine, Mayu, one of the nine that had entered the place, had very unfortunately run into a couple of the so called "engineers" of the horrible dimension, for it was upon their anger and their desire for vengeance this place was founded. Though evil, they were highly deceptive, because they appeared as poor, innocent souls when they, in truth were nothing but. They would ravage and kill and destroy any they could get their hands on, no matter who it was that were in their paths.

Mayu had found the two inside the cursed school's infirmary, and since she had always had a soft spot for both children and people in need of help, she had decided that she would sit down, take a breather, and see if she could help any of them.

Her memories of what had happened between that point and up until her death were still decidedly hazy. She remembered two of her friends charging into the room multiple times, and she remembered they had tried to… Maybe save her, save her from a malevolence that was still unknown to her up until it happened. After that, she could recall being sent flying through a dark tunnel, eventually crashing into a wall. Mayu had barely felt any pain at all; what hurt the most was the ephemeral grip the two ghost spirits somehow had on her, without even touching her. Even this didn't hurt more than having someone forcefully squeeze your legs as hard as they could with their hands.

She had almost died too quickly to feel any exceptional pain.

Almost.

The split second of a split second before her life ended was more than horrible. She crashed into a wall, she recalled once more, and literally was pulverized. However, just before her body was turned pretty much inside out, her already overactive nerves sending pain to her brain, she experienced a pain that was so different from any other pain she had ever felt in her entire life before. It hurt so badly that she couldn't even describe it, but it felt like it hurt more than every other injury she had sustained combined in her life.

And that pain was now going to follow her throughout the rest of her days, for the rest of eternity, contrary to what many would believe, that death would end said pain.

Shortly after her body had transformed into a bloody, gut-ridden mess, her still somewhat intact spirit had emerged from the empty shell that was now the remains of her body, and the very first thing that she reacted upon was the very same pain she had felt just fractions of moments before she died. However, her spirit didn't appear quite as grotesque as her corporeal body had. Her entire front was completely splattered with blood, and it looked as though all her inside was gone, as if her entire thoracic and digestive cavities had been dug and hollowed out. Her broken spine was visible, though not to the naked eye. Still living souls could not perceive their spirits.

Her face was completely smashed in, as if someone with a glove crammed with spikes had punched her square in the node. Her jaw, and everything below it, just like her mid-body, was completely obliterated, and the only still apparent trace of who she had been in the living life was one dull green eye. Her skull was also completely cracked open in the back; most of her brains had even spilt out through the massive cavity. She looked like her entire head had been smashed, and the only surviving parts had been one of her eyes and a little bit of her upper jaw.

She could still walk, against all odds. She had felt thirsty, hungry, and really, really, tired the last minutes before she had died. Now she was just tired. Neither hungry nor thirsty.

She figured dead things didn't need the things that helped them stay alive any more.

After her death, her spirit had started walking, slow as it was, in a direction that wasn't exactly certain. During the entire time, only one thing had been on her mind.

_Shige-nii__**…**_

Mayu Suzumoto didn't want at this stage, anything more than for her best friend Sakutaro to hold her in his arms, or just pat her shoulder lightly, just like he always did when he was actually happy.

She had wandered the halls endlessly, for what felt like an eternity without end, looking for this very special person. Despite what she did, she couldn't seem to find him. She continued looking and looking for him, but no matter how much time passed (or at least how much time it felt like had passed), she couldn't seem to find him.

This lasted until she stumbled into the other, strange building of the school, when she descended some stairs. She could both hear and sense a presence of a living being, mostly due to the loud panting she heard nearby. Quickening her speed, she went in the direction of the sound as quickly as she could… And there he was, leaning toughly against a wall for support, right next to the bottom of the staircase.

Sakutaro looked awfully stressed, as if he'd very recently done a lot of things in a fairly short time. His cobalt blue hair was noticeably ruffled, and there were visible signs of fresh perspiration. She immediately ran up to him, only to find that he would not acknowledge her presence. Perhaps she needed some way to contact him, to get him to notice her, since she was no longer drawing breath and possessing a beating heart.

The cellphone in Sakutaro's hand, for some odd reason, seemed strangely inviting, as if it could act as some kind of outlet for Mayu's ephemeral being. She didn't have a clue of why it was this way; she was very new to being dead.

She heard Sakutaro whisper something. The words she could not quite make out, but she sensed the ecstatic tone in his voice as he apparently looked at something in the cellphone's screen. Mayu's incorporeal form came ever close, and was now so close that she would have been able to sense the warmth of his skin, had she still had functioning nerve endings.

Peering over his shoulder, she could sense rather than see the screen of the phone. What she saw shocked her to the very core, even more so than when she had died.

In the brightly shining screen, there was a taken picture. It was easily recognizable. The floor, the wall, the massive splatter of blood, the bits and pieces of guts and flesh all throughout the smudgy mess. Mayu immediately understood that her possibly best friend ever was enjoying himself looking at her dead, inside-out turned corpse.

Instantly, she felt an irresistible sorrow sweep over her. Her only remaining eye tightened up as a ghostly tear formed in the now dead tear gland, travelling through its adjacent canal. Mayu reached one trembling arm up and stroke Sakutaro's hair, shivering at the touch. Sakutaro made no indication that he had felt anything, but instead kept muttering ecstatic gibberish to himself about the beauty of a body turned inside out.

Mayu found her own voice act without confirmation from her own will, and she trembled in fear as she could not bring herself to look away from the atrocious abomination that was now her physical body, or what was left of it. She could hear herself whispering words, asking Sakutaro to stop looking at her insides, and at first, she figured that he couldn't hear what she said here either, just like with all the other things she had done to try and gain his attention. However, her entire being seemingly jerked up when she could hear the familiar tone of Sakutaro's cellphone ringing. Surely he couldn't have any phone service in this hellhole, right?

Horrified, Mayu found out that when a greatly spooked Sakutaro Morishige hesitantly answered the call that it was her own voice, saying exactly what it had a few seconds before. She hadn't made any motion or action to interact with the phone, and yet it happened.

Within the span of half a second, Sakutaro jerked away from the wall he was leaning against, emitting a startled grunt of alarm. He stared in confusion at the telephone screen, wondering somewhere in his blood-chilled head how he could receive calls despite the massive lack of service, until he started hearing her voice…

"Please don't look at my insides… Shige-nii…" Came the impossible ghost voice from the telephone's speaker. Mayu didn't understand anything. She hadn't said anything. Yet it was her voice. Mayu's ephemeral form looked up at the terrified Sakutaro, who had started walking backwards in massive disbelief, holding and staring at the cellphone as if it wasn't real. And then, came all the screaming, in that excruciatingly painful moment of realization.

When Mayu thought about it, that scream of absolute despair and helplessness was so feral and frightened that it at times felt like it hurt more than the pain she had felt during her very last second in the living life. Not to mention the brutal "treatment" of madness.

A heavy heart and a mysterious, black mist-like substance tugging at her ankles, as if eager to climb her legs later, the recently deceased Mayu Suzumoto continued along the empty hall, trying to find someone close to her heart, despite dead.

* * *

There had been few things that mattered to Sakutaro Morishige when he had still been in the living life. There was his family, and then his acting career. While he usually kept to himself, even at home, his parents had always supported him, and he did appreciate them for that. He had once indirectly heard his father say to his mother that "acting was in his blood" and that they should do whatever they could to help him reach his dreams. While Sakutaro had never directly confronted his parents about this statement, he often kept it in the back of his head, since his father was an actor himself, even though retired, so he would know what he was talking about.

There weren't really any need for having acting in your blood if you didn't have any blood left.

Sakutaro's death had left him surprisingly intact. His ephemeral form was almost identical to his former living one and the only big difference was the fairly large crevice running down the midst of his head, exposing some of his brain and cracked skull, from repeatedly bashing his head against both hard, wooden walls and sharp windows of glass. Then again, bashing your head into said materials multiple times did hurt a lot.

Sakutaro could usually cope with the pain. It was pretty rough, but he had always seen pain as just another emotion, really. He had accidentally hurt himself several times in his past, like everyone else, but even if there was pain involved, Sakutaro mostly just shrugged it off without many second thoughts. Moping over being in a painful state of being wouldn't grant much, except for possibly an annoyance of one's own incompetence.

However, coping with said pain would be a lot easier if _she_ had just been around with him…

Ever since he met her, which at one of the sessions of their school's drama club, he had immediately found her interesting. He wasn't sure what to call it, he was certain it wasn't any kind of physical attraction; Sakutaro didn't very often think about that kind of thing, but she had seemed so intriguing and different from all the other almost kind of boring people.

And of course that she was fantastic at acting.

Sakutaro wasn't certain, he guessed he did sort of like Mayu… But their current relationship was and always had been just fine being close friends for his part. And so, being forced of being in her absence made him feel lonely, a feeling he shouldn't have been experiencing since he was used to being among people, not with people.

A black mist-like substance started tugging at his ankles as he walked up a stairwell sluggishly.

* * *

The second thing that made the teacher assistant Yui Shishido's days worth experiencing was her cat, Monet. How he would always eagerly wait for her return from work, immediately rushing to the front door from wherever he was at the point he heard her unlock the front door, and how he would lovingly rub the length of his body along her ankles, purring audibly with a want for his owner to reach down and pet him behind the ears, the way she always did.

The first thing that made the teacher assistant Yui Shishido's days worth experiencing were the students of class 2-9, Kisaragi Academy. She always looked forward to seeing them, and to spend a normal full day of both teaching, but also general time, such as lunch breaks, or of she was lucky enough to run into any of her students on her way home from the school, or maybe even days when the school was closed, like on weekends. Like that time she had met Naomi and Satoshi sittingat a bus stop in the city. When she had first saw them, she had cheerfully said hi to initiate a conversation, and then made a comment that made both of them go red as tomatoes. However, it turned out that Satoshi had met up with Naomi at her house to get some help with some homework, and when they were done, Satoshi took a bus home, and Naomi had decided to follow him to the bus stop, just to keep him company until he got home.

Yui Shishido had always thought that Naomi and Satoshi would make a great couple. Just like Ayumi and Yoshiki. How they always messed along with each other yet still remained good friends.

Yui Shishido spent many hours In the ephemeral form thinking about her students, especially those she had found huddled up in the classroom, after scaring the living soul out of them. Had they all gotten out alive? If so, then why did she have such a bad feeling in the pit of her stomach? Apart from the feeling of being dead, of course.

Seeing the empty classrooms of Heavenly Host Elementary school tore at her more than she expected. It reminded her of what she had just lost in her life, one of the few things that mattered.

But surely they couldn't all have fallen, right?

Yui Shishido found herself praying every day for the safety of her students. Just as she had done in the living life. But if even one of them were harmed or worse, Yui knew that she had failed her task, that she had failed to protect them.

That was an unforgivable mistake.

Black mist settled in on the floor around her as she sat with her head buried in her arms.

**(A/N: Will be a rewrite of this, probably.)**


End file.
